SQLXML enables XML support for your SQL Server Database. It allows developers to bridge the gap between XML and relational data. You can create XML View of your existing relational data and work with it as if it was an XML file. SQLXML allows you to:

A FIRM on the show floor here in Taipei is offering the chance to buy an Xbox that uses a Celeron 1.4GHz/256K cache chip rather than the feeble 733MHz Pentium III that ships with the console.

Friendtech is also offering a mod for the Xbox which provides S-Video and A/V output, 5.1 surround sound and a hard disk upgrade.

The package it sells includes the console, a gamepad, an S-Video AV cable, a bag, a power cable and manuals. The chip inside this machine can be switched from a so called “standard speed” of 740MHz to a “turbo” speed of 1480MHz.

The company claims that its mod of the Xbox doesn’t affect people who buy its FT-XBX2. It says it buys its machines from Microsoft or through authorized resellers, and that allows it to change the specs of the console. The mods cause it to lose its warranty rights, but provides its own 90 day warranty on the machine.

But in its product literature it says because the FT-XBX2 can read DVDs and MP3s from all regions it provides a “Media Key” with the machine which means users must agree not to use it for illegal purposes. That includes copying games and pirated movies.

NewsGator is a "news aggregator" that runs in Microsoft Outlook. It allows you to subscribe to various syndicated news feeds (such as weblogs, news sites, etc.) and have news from these sites be delivered right into your Outlook folders. There are thousands of sites which syndicate their content in RSS format, and many more being added every day.

The Office HTML Viewer server provides support for users who want to view the content of files on document libraries, but do not have Word, Excel, or PowerPoint from Office 97, or a newer release of Office, installed on their local computer.

One element of Longhorn that few have mentioned is the forthcoming natural-user-interface (NUI) foundation platform. Microsoft is working to find ways to add speech and other forms of "rich user interaction" to its next-generation Windows client — and other forthcoming products, to boot. <!-- start ziffarticle //-->Check out the few details on NUI<!-- end ziffarticle //--> we were able to wrest from the Redmond software maker.

Microsoft's Security Response Center in Redmond, Wash., is the computing equivalent of a hospital emergency ward. When a problem comes in the door the center's director, Kevin Kean, and his staff must swiftly make an assessment: Is the security weakness detected in a Microsoft software product only minor? Or is it possibly so serious that, if exploited by a vandal's malicious code (as happened last month with the Blaster worm) it might crash computers and networks around the world?

If the threat appears grave, the problem goes immediately into the center's emergency operating room, where it is attended to by a team of Microsoft engineers, working nearly round-the-clock to analyze the flawed code, anticipate paths of attack, devise a software patch to fix the defect and alert millions of customers of the problem and the patch.

"It's triage and emergency response — so it's a lot like an E.R. ward in that sense," Mr. Kean observed last week.

The race to protect the computing patient has begun again.

On Sept. 10, after Mr. Kean's team completed another E.R. mission, Microsoft issued an emergency warning of a critical vulnerability in its Windows operating systems and released a patch — its 39th so far this year. What particularly worries computer professionals about the warning is that the security hole in Windows is the same kind of flaw, in the same feature of the operating system, that was exploited in August by the notorious Blaster worm.

Those who monitor Internet crises know that once Microsoft raises the alarm and releases a patch, a curious race begins. Digital vandals — those who write worms, viruses and other rogue programs — eagerly download the patch and reverse-engineer, taking it apart to search for clues on how to exploit the very Microsoft security hole the patch was meant to cover.

Some portion of Microsoft customers, from corporations to home PC users, takes the time to download the patch, but most do not. Meanwhile, there is a scramble to write malicious code and spread it across the Internet.

The Blaster worm was sighted on the Internet 25 days after Microsoft warned of that security hole. The company issued the latest warning 19 days ago. So if recent history is a guide, Blaster 2 may be coming soon to a computer near you.

The brand-name worms and viruses of the last couple of years — Blaster, SoBig, Slammer, Code Red, Nimda, ILoveYou and others — are simply the most virulent representatives of an alarming surge in attacks by malicious programmers.

The CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University, which monitors rogue computer programs, reported 76,404 attack incidents in the first half of this year, approaching the total of 82,094 for all of last year. And the 2002 incident count was nearly four times the total in 2000. If anything, the CERT statistics may understate the problem, because the organization counts all related attacks as a single incident. A worm or virus like Blaster or SoBig, a self-replicating program that can infect millions of computers, is but one event.

The security flaws Mr. Kean's team is scrambling to catch and patch are part of the larger problem with software today. The programs that people rely on for all manner of tasks — from writing reports and sending e-mail, to monitoring factory floors and managing electric power grids — are becoming increasingly large, complex and, all but inevitably, filled with bugs. The problem is magnified by the fact that most computers are now linked to the Internet, enabling programs to travel around the globe and mingle with other programs in unforeseen ways.

Most software bugs are a result of small oversights by a programmer. And most large software programs are combinations of newer code and old code, accumulated over time, almost as if in sedimentary layers. A programmer working years ago could not have foreseen the additional complexity and the interaction of software programs in the Internet era. Yet much of that old code lives on, sometimes causing unintended trouble.

Neowin has posted a puclic link for the WinXP update roll up pack beta. Normally links are posted on closed betaplace servers for official beta testers. This pack is posted on the public MS Winupdate download server.

Reuters Group plc suddenly has emerged as a hub for instant-messaging interconnectivity. The information-services firm this week will disclose an agreement with Microsoft to connect its Reuters Messaging IM service with MSN Messenger. The move comes on the heels of similar agreements with IBM Lotus Software and America Online to connect Reuters IM users with users of IBM Lotus Instant Messaging and AOL Instant Messenger.

By connecting its service, which is used exclusively by financial-services companies, to three of the largest players in the IM world, Reuters lacks only a deal with Yahoo in its attempt to let clients use one tool to communicate with their customers and partners, regardless of which IM product they use. That kind of connectivity will greatly simplify the lives of IT managers at financial-services firms, where it's necessary to use all the major IM clients so brokers can communicate with their customers all day long.

Posted by bink on September 29 2003, 6:25 PM.
Posted in Microsoft Corp.

Lindows.com received the following take down notice concerning its http://www.MSfreePC.com web service designed to help Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT)customers process their claims from the $1.1 billion settlement Microsoft has agreed to pay.

In a bid to maintain its competitive advantage while it preps Windows Longhorn for release over the next two years, Microsoft will not provide attendees at the Professional Developer Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles with the code for Aero, Longhorn's exciting and innovative graphical user interface. Instead, attendees will receive a special Longhorn build with the Aero bits removed, and Microsoft executives will only provide a special demonstration preview of Aero during Chairman Bill Gates' keynote address. I've now verified these plans with several sources at and close to Microsoft.

"[Until early September,] Microsoft wasn't sure whether it would just demo Aero or supply it to PDC attendees," one source told me recently. But the decision to only demonstrate Aero was made because of the long delay between the PDC and Longhorn's final release, which is set for late 2005. If the company released all of its UI work now, its OS competitors--such as Apple Computer and various companies and organizations in the Linux camp, all of which have fewer customers and faster release cycles than Microsoft--would be able to clone its work before Longhorn releases. This problem has dogged Microsoft in the past, the most recent example being Apple's Expose technology, which will ship in Mac OS X 10.3 late this year; Microsoft has been demonstrating Expose-like technology for years now, but the work won't show up in Windows until the Longhorn release at the earliest.